Riding The Rails In The Usa

Preachers railed against it: "Traveling at speeds up to 20 miles per hour went against the Lord's plan!" Doctors told their patients that traveling on it would cause serious physical and mental ailments, including the boiling of the blood. Newspapers cried out, "It is a topsy-turvy, harum-scarum whirligig!" But it didn't matter: America loved the train and the freedom of movement that came with it. Riding the Rails in America traces the dynamic relationship of America with the train, showing how the railroad was the single largest influence on the development of the nation's history and economy as it became possible to move freight and people farther and faster than ever before.

Through letters and photographs, profiles teenagers who hopped the freight trains during the Great Depression in order to find adventure, seek employment, or escape poverty.

A former Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway CEO tells the behind-the-scenes story of the transformation and resurgence of America’s ailing railroads. When Robert D. Krebs joined the ranks of Southern Pacific Railroad in 1966, the industry had been in decline for decades, and the future of trains was in peril. Despite these obstacles, Krebs fell in love with the rugged, competitive business of railroads and was determined to overcome its resistance to change and put rail transportation back on track. By the age of forty, Krebs was president of the Southern Pacific Railroad and had also served as chief executive of both the Santa Fe Railway and Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway companies. Riding the Rails: Inside the Business of America’s Railroads details Krebs’s rise to a position of influence in the recovery of America’s railroads—and offers a unique insider’s view into the boardrooms where executives and businessmen reimagined transportation in the United States.

Fully updated to take into account route and timetable changes, this is the only book specifically designed for US train travel. Rugged charm sets the train apart from more mundane means of transport and its low environmental impact is of particular current interest. Pampered by helpful attendants, you can travel from coast to coast, explore the Rocky Mountains and ride directly alongside two oceans. Less expensive than flying and more comfortable than the bus, the train keeps you relaxed and in touch with an ever-changing landscape as the world becomes a framed but moving picture.

Hopping a freight in the St. Louis rail yards, Ted Conover0́4winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award0́4embarks on his dream trip, traveling the rails with "the knights of the road." Equipped with rummage store clothing, a bedroll, and his notebooks, Conover immerses himself in the peculiar culture of the hobo, where handshakes and intoductions are foreign, but where everyone knows where the Sally (Salvation Army) and the Willy (Goodwill) are. Along the way he encounters unexpected charity (a former cop goes out of his way to offer Conover a dollar) and indignities (what do you do when there are no public bathrooms?) and learns how to survive on the road.But above all, Conover gets to know the men and women who, for one reason or another, live this life. There's Lonny, who accepts that there are some towns he can't enter before dark because he's black, and Pistol Pete, a cowboy who claims his son is a doctor and his daughter a ballerina, and Sheba Sheila Sheils, who's built herself a house out of old tires. By turns resourceful and desperate, generous and mistrusting, independent and communal, philosophical and profoundly cynical, the tramps Conover meets show him a segment of humanity outside society, neither wholly romantic nor wholly tragic, and very much like the rest of us.

An epic and revelatory narrative of the most important transportation technology of the modern world In his wide-ranging and entertaining new book, Tom Zoellner—coauthor of the New York Times–bestselling An Ordinary Man—travels the globe to tell the story of the sociological and economic impact of the railway technology that transformed the world—and could very well change it again. From the frigid trans-Siberian railroad to the antiquated Indian Railways to the Japanese-style bullet trains, Zoellner offers a stirring story of this most indispensable form of travel. A masterful narrative history, Train also explores the sleek elegance of railroads and their hypnotizing rhythms, and explains how locomotives became living symbols of sex, death, power, and romance.

An Economist and Financial Times “Best Book of the Year” “Harrowing” true stories from two years of immersion reporting on the migrant trail from Chiapas to Arizona—an “honorable successor to enduring works like George Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier” (New York Times) One day a few years ago, 300 migrants were kidnapped between the remote desert towns of Altar, Mexico, and Sasabe, Arizona. A local priest got 120 released, many with broken ankles and other marks of abuse, but the rest vanished. Óscar Martínez, a young writer from El Salvador, was in Altar soon after the abduction, and his account of the migrant disappearances is only one of the harrowing stories he garnered from two years spent traveling up and down the migrant trail from Central America and across the US border. More than a quarter of a million Central Americans make this increasingly dangerous journey each year, and each year as many as 20,000 of them are kidnapped. Martínez writes in powerful, unforgettable prose about clinging to the tops of freight trains; finding respite, work and hardship in shelters and brothels; and riding shotgun with the border patrol. Illustrated with stunning full-color photographs, The Beast is the first book to shed light on the harsh new reality of the migrant trail in the age of the narcotraficantes.